Gee, the Slim Whitman Boutique Just Doesn’t Have the Same Ring

Imagine the dilemma of Barbra Streisand fans during her brief U.S. tour: Do they spend $100 for that sterling silver limited-edition chain or $400 for the tour jacket?

Then there is the frustration of being 20 people back in the line at the merchandise table as the lights go down, signaling the start of the show.

In the old days, that would have been the end of it. You get your souvenirs at the show--or you don’t get them at all.

Not anymore: Operators are standing by.

Yes, mail order has come to the pop souvenir world.

For the most part, concert merchandise sales has been viewed as impulse buying, save for some goods available through fan club mailings. But the trend is to expand the sales of T-shirts and other items through mail order and retail store sales.

Sony Signatures, the company handling the Streisand merchandising, has moved aggressively into mail order--figuring that thousands of fans never get to the concert and thousands more may be looking for gift items.

“(Mail order) is evolving music and event merchandising to a higher level than just selling things at the arena,” says Dave Furano, senior vice president of Sony Signatures. The company is also selling souvenir items for Janet Jackson, Billy Joel, Carlos Santana and others by mail and through stores.

Sony Signatures will also be selling Streisand items through special Barbra Boutiques being set up in major department stores and plans eventually to sell its entire line through a chain of stores modeled after the Disney and Warner Bros. stores currently found in some shopping malls.

The industry is watching closely.

“I don’t know how well the mail-order sales can do,” says Rod Stewart’s manager, Arnold Stiefel, “but I’m eager to see.”

Full-color brochures for the Streisand product line are being handed out at the concerts, featuring a handy 800 number to order most of the items sold at the shows, and a few that aren’t. There are T-shirts and coffee mugs emblazoned with Barbra’s face, a deluxe ballpoint pen bearing the legend “Barbra: the Concert” and even framed gold records commemorating Streisand’s most popular works--”People,” “The Way We Were” and “The Broadway Album.”

Even without the mail and phone orders, the sales at Streisand’s concerts alone are shattering records. Where an average of $5 per person spent on T-shirts, posters and other items at a concert is generally considered great and about $14 per head has been the past top figure, Streisand fans are spending an average of more than $20 a person in merchandise at the shows.

The added take from phone and mail orders raises the stakes to previously unthinkable levels.

“Barbra has reinvented the idea of this kind of marketing a star,” says Stiefel, though he cautions that Streisand’s situation may be unique. “If this gives the signal to merchandisers that they can open Rod Boutiques or Bruce Boutiques or Elton Boutiques or Whitney Boutiques, it’s just not the same.”